March 2nd 2017 teacher interview with Nigel Evans, Music teacher at Sir Frederick Banting Secondary School and Symphonic Band Conductor for the University of Western Ontario
“did you go straight from Teacher’s College into music education?”
“Yes, I was one of the lucky group to get a job straight out of Teacher’s College and I got six contract lines in my first year of teaching”
“so its almost like making the artist out of the people?”
“exactly, yeah.”
“Do you feel music education should or could be held as a mandatory subject like math and English?”
Well, it is in elementary, it’s mandatory all the way through really. The delivery of it is a whole different topic, right? how’s it being delivered and who’s delivering it? In high school it would be nice to think that we could have mandatory music all the way through, but then truthfully I wonder about that because what about students who its just not their thing? Is there mandatory basketball for four years? Is there mandatory… science even? The only subject that’s mandatory in the curriculum is English for four years and even then you can you can pick your level. So, I think its okay to have everyone try it once; so my personal bias would be that everybody try it in grade nine. If you get them hooked, if you enjoy it, if they discover a new skill maybe you’ll keep them longer, but I think it would be counter productive to actually see people enjoying music if we forced people to do it any more than we forced them to do the other courses […] and id rather have at the end of the fourth year a group of students that really wanted to be their versus their there because literally someone made them show up, because again that’s not going to get that end result of it becoming a life long skill that they enjoy”
“In terms of the curriculum that you’re given for music, how much of that is obligatory?
“Well, the document itself you have overall and specific expectations so the overall have to be evaluated. At the end of the course you have to make sure that you’ve gone through all of those overall expectations and the mode that you do it, through strings, or woodwinds, brass, whatever, you’ve covered those expectations. Its still flexible in terms of you might do it through playing an observation, you might do it through written quizzes, the specific expectations you need to try and cover and then there’s these little teaching prompts that are just helpful guides. I forget truthfully if it’s a legal document in terms of the education act, but I mean a principal can (very rarely I don’t think it happens much in music) come and ask you how you are covering these expectations when evaluated so there is the expectation that you do that work. You can assess them and manage them in lots of different ways; you can cluster them together, you can spread them out, there’s lots of flexibility within that but you cant not do them, you cant ignore it. Its not just ‘well try this and see how it works’ it’s ‘this is what you must be doing’”
“the things you must be doing, is that the elements of music and such…?
“well its everything, right, so its basically the overall expectations are more general. It could be play and sing with good tone and good posture, understanding healthy performance habits, learning the elements of music, learning music theory appropriate to the grade, the overall is of course very broad, the specific give you more detail by grade, so it’s sequential. The million-dollar question is ‘does that mean every teacher of every subject does every part of the curriculum?’ I think if you ask any student here they’re going to say no. what we should be doing is looking at the curriculum not as a restriction but a way to creatively teach. You can see any written document as restrictive or you can see it as a way to inform your practise”
“so youre able to control how you deliver the lessons you give?”
“of course you can yeah and I would say in music since we don’t have standardized testing like they do in English and Math and we don’t have that pressure of ‘every student we teach, if lets say it’s a 4U physics class, needs to cover this topic then this topic. We cover the topics but we can cover them in ways that suit A: our students and are clientele and B: our own teaching style. Some teachers can get up in front of the class and do a lecture style on the romantic era and its great and some teachers need to make that more of a cooperative project, some teachers need to get audio visual stuff going on most teachers like me have settled down on a mixture of all of those things what would be called ‘old fashioned chalk and talk’ versus ‘lets get some technology, lets watch some video’ we cant take the class to Vienna so lets bring Vienna to the class. To me, you’ve got two choices; we have a curriculum, its not going to go away because you don’t like it, so you can either push against it and get grumpy or you can be creative and use it as an opportunity.”
“okay, wonderful! If there’s anything you could change or replace in the curriculum, would you change anything?”
“There was a change back in ‘99/’2000 that free’d things up and that’s okay, two things; one is not in the curriculum but its in growing success and that’s the assessment document, I do believe that attendance in a small way should be a part of a student’s mark. It is here at western in many courses and I think that we’re missing an opportunity to teach students that showing up counts and being present physically and mentally counts. And we have situations in any school where students can miss 25-30 classes a semester and still pass and to me there’s something philosophically wrong about that because yeah they’ve done the assessments and handed the tests in but they’ve missed part of the experience and so we’re only a step away from ‘why doesn’t that student do it online? Why isn’t everything online?’ I think being there and being present is a vital part of 99.9% of classes, it should be. And obviously that excepts for illness and serious things in the family, of course, I think we have to be very understanding of that more so perhaps now than ever, but showing up is important. Another thing I would change which isn’t in the document itself is we need a little bit more curriculum support. It would be nice to have maybe some more Canadian content in our method books so we’re not playing American folk songs and we can bring that in ourselves and I’ve done that now but it would be nice to have a little more history. Like, maybe after 16 years someone could write a Canadian book that covers our music history and indigenous music and pull together all those resources that maybe we do individually but don’t always have the time to share. We have very little in curriculum support and again, some teachers would say ‘but that restricts me’ no, I can pick my music and I can pick how to teach it but it would be nice to have a bit of resource to draw on for the students. So that’s my personal philosophy on that, I’m not sure if everybody would agree with that.
“In terms of teaching music to an inexperienced student, what would be the most important thing you would want them to understand about music?”
“That its doing thing, that everybody to a greater or lesser extent can do and I think its getting them making music as soon as possible and that’s difficult with a kid on the tuba in grade seven, to get them to that point where they feel they are doing something musical and I know I still struggle with that because the technique gets in the way. Things like learning to play, in quotes ‘the right notes’. You cant have 26 people sitting together in a classroom playing random notes, you have to come to some consensus whether that’s unison, chords or whatever. Its getting past the technique to the music that’s the biggest challenge. Some students come to you naturally predisposed to do that even if its in a different medium, like they play the piano well, you’re teaching them trumpet, it clicks sooner. Some students don’t have any background but you can see they’re naturally musical, some students, its not necessarily their thing and I’ve taught a good number of students over the years that stick with music for four years, their terrific people, their terrific fun and its not their thing, they know its not their thing. I never tell them, but they stick with it because they show up, and they like the friendships and they like the trips and they like music, they like being the third clarinet in the middle of all that sound its kind of cool. Back to the original question I think its getting them to the music as soon as possible because there’s so many things to get past, even with voice, it’s very natural until its not. If you don’t have a good singing voice, you have to get them to that point where they can sing on pitch with a healthy tone and they aren’t trying to sound like their favourite pop singer who can sing three octaves higher. We still have to deal with technique and organization of that. We have to get them to the music sooner.
“Have you seen any changes in a student’s overall attitude or behaviour after being introduced to music? Perhaps in the beginning they weren’t listening, fidgety, a little stand offish but then towards the end changed with the introduction of music?”
“Absolutely. I think music can help with that, I think the arts can help with that, I just think that doing something that’s bigger than you can help with that. The problem is with any system whether it’s a school, university or big organization is we’re pushed into a hole you know? The square peg, round hole and so we know most of our students are all so individual, they don’t all fit the same mold. 30% or so of our students are introverted versus extroverted. I think for the extroverts for example sometimes music helps them become a little more towards the introvert side, at least understanding that side and maybe for introverts it gives them that opportunity to get on to the extrovert spectrum because as we all know you cant just be one, you have to have a little bit of the other tendencies. So have I ever had a student that’s completely out of control and music helped tame the savage beast you know what I mean? I would say more in elementary. My first few years I taught grade 7 and 8 music and there were some kids that for sure with music its not that it calmed them down and took away who they were but it gave them a focus. Can you do that through a basketball program or something? Yeah if that’s their thing, it depends on what their thing is but I would say music can be very beneficial for students who come to high school and don’t have a thing yet, don’t have a group of friends and they can then find some commonality with those kids. I like it that most of the music kids at my school aren’t just music kids, they’re also on the badminton team or just came back from the provincial competition for swimming and were the key swimmers, that’s awesome. When we do feeder schools we ask the students to wear their team jerseys not their music jerseys so [they] (audience of the feeder school tours) can see that wow there’s wrestlers and rugby players and I think its great that music’s part of that experience its a collage, its not just an individual snapshot.
“What has been your favourite moment as a music educator?”
“I saw this one coming and you know what though a buddy of mine who’s a music teacher too and has now moved to a different faucet of education we talk about this years ago and I’m not just saying this because I’m being recorded but I firmly believe in the whole legacy thing. The Mr. Hollands Opus thing, that’s great and it’s a great movie and it’ll be great when I retire to look back on the years and look at the room and the things we’ve done but I really believe that our real joy as music educators is the here and now. Its great to be talking to you as an ex student, to have Julia playing in the band, Robert, but its more about today; is there something I did today that clicked, or even with the symphonic band, was there something we did today that made someone better or made someone smile or made a connection to someone and those are the things. I just feel its not about legacy, because really, you’re four years away from being forgotten. You walk into the school four years after you retire and every kid in the school is going to be like ‘I don’t know who this old guy is’ so its about the here and now. Sometimes we get that right and we have those moments at the end of the day, where I know, at banting for example where there’s kids in the hallway eating lunch that I don’t know and they don’t know who I am other than I teach at the school and I just try to say ‘hi how’s your day?’ or I listen to a song on their iPod, its those momentary connections. I guess now it does make me think of one. Several years ago I got a card from a student whose graduating, who I only taught in grade nine and she said ‘Mr. Evans I just want to tell you I had such a great experience in grade nine, I really enjoyed music. I wish I could have continued, I couldn’t’ and said ‘I just want you to know you were so kind’ it was just something nice but she remembered for years later to right me a card. Wow. So its that. And that to me is more reflective of what I tried to do with her four years ago and that’s the important thing.
“If you could change anything about the way music is taught today, what would you change?”
“I think the big picture thing that is happening in education, not just in music is we need more specialists teaching specialist subjects. I’m a parent, two of my kids are in high school, I do not want their physics class to be taught by a biology teacher and I definitely don’t want it to be taught by a mathematician who took a little bit of science in university. I really feel that that is a slippery slope. I’ve taught English and I’ve taught history with a reasonable degree of success, I shouldn’t be teaching math. Someone says they have a general BEd, so I can teach that subject, no. It’s wrong. I can play soccer, I shouldn’t be coaching it. There’s a skill, and there’s an honour and there’s a quality in what we do as music educators and as math educators and we need to retain that. I think it’s a shame and I think in the elementary schools it’s getting worse than the high schools where we have people who took piano lessons for a few years and got their grade 6 or 7 and haven’t gone through a program like you’re doing and are teaching music. That is a change I would like to make. And that’s our unions, that’s our teachers union that has made that decision to make people more general and less specialist and I think that’s a real determent to the profession.
“would you almost challenge the second teachable with that?”
“If the second teachable is done well I think it can be a good thing. If someone is really serious about lets say music, and history as a second teachable and they take the right kind of history courses. The one I always think about is English, when people have English as a second teachable and they took a really oddball course like “Game of Thrones Literature”. You need to learn about Shakespeare and you need to learn how to teach kids how to write. If you’re going to be a teacher and you’re going to make English your second teachable, take the courses that are going to prepare you to be an English teacher and not just learn more about English. My second teachable is vocal, I have a year of a masters in vocal ed and pedagogy so I mean I felt pretty well qualified to teach vocal, obviously not as much a singer would be but I had a thorough background in vocal music and not just a weekend course kind of thing. So the second teachable is a difficult thing and I think more and more people need it to be employable, but I do feel if people do take courses towards a second teachable they should take courses that are actually relevant to them in the high school setting.
“is there an idea or ideology that you feel should be focused on in general?”
A couple of things based on previous experience and past experience. One is I think more connection between the elementary and secondary panels so we have a sense of curriculum between us, so its not just you finish grade 8 and lets hope for the best. There needs to be more flow between elementary and secondary education again the union issue gets in the way there but its nice to think we could collaborate more. I also feel that students need to play by ear more. More sound before symbol, or more ‘lets find that note, lets play frère Jacque and create something’ I think tied into that, playing by ear and playing by ear with structure, not just random notes encourages students to try things by ear and it gets them thinking ‘well now I can go home and try this by ear’ and opens the door and tied into that is composition. And composition not in the strict sense that we have to come up with a symphony and it has to be neatly written out but composing things that has for the level the students are at some sort of aesthetic value. A beginning, middle and end, whether its four bars, or 48 bars or whatever. Something the grade 12’s at banting did, its not necessarily composition but they do a cover song assignment where they have to cover someone else’s music using traditional acoustic music. They can use a bit of guitar or pia and their band instruments but the other day there was an all female group and some if them sang, none of them would consider themselves a singer but the class agreed that their actual arrangement improved on the original. It was a better version of the song and the words meant more because of the way they arranged it. That’s pretty cool. That’s something we should be doing more to become facilitators not just teachers as much.
“is there anything you feel you are able to bring to the students that other educators aren’t able to do?”
“I think there can be more of a connection potentially because you’re teaching students for four years rather than in and out. Way back when I started teaching, one of my associate teachers basically said ‘it comes down to this, do you love kids? Do you love music? Then you’re fine’ and it’s very simplistic but its kind of like, yeah. If you don’t love the students the kids will know and if you don’t love teaching the kids will know and you’ll have nothing to teach. Those two things have to come out. Are you going to love every kid every day? Maybe not. Are you always going to check the end result of what you do musically? No because you’re going to want to get better and you’re going to want your kids t get better but if you’re going to have an overriding love of what you’re doing and the people you’re trying to teach that’s a simple way to think about it."
March 2nd 2017 teacher interview with Nigel Evans, Music teacher at Sir Frederick Banting Secondary School and Symphonic Band Conductor for the University of Western Ontario
- At what point in your life did you decide to go into music education?
“did you go straight from Teacher’s College into music education?”
“Yes, I was one of the lucky group to get a job straight out of Teacher’s College and I got six contract lines in my first year of teaching”
- What do you feel is the most important skill or lesson to be taken from music education?
“so its almost like making the artist out of the people?”
“exactly, yeah.”
“Do you feel music education should or could be held as a mandatory subject like math and English?”
Well, it is in elementary, it’s mandatory all the way through really. The delivery of it is a whole different topic, right? how’s it being delivered and who’s delivering it? In high school it would be nice to think that we could have mandatory music all the way through, but then truthfully I wonder about that because what about students who its just not their thing? Is there mandatory basketball for four years? Is there mandatory… science even? The only subject that’s mandatory in the curriculum is English for four years and even then you can you can pick your level. So, I think its okay to have everyone try it once; so my personal bias would be that everybody try it in grade nine. If you get them hooked, if you enjoy it, if they discover a new skill maybe you’ll keep them longer, but I think it would be counter productive to actually see people enjoying music if we forced people to do it any more than we forced them to do the other courses […] and id rather have at the end of the fourth year a group of students that really wanted to be their versus their there because literally someone made them show up, because again that’s not going to get that end result of it becoming a life long skill that they enjoy”
“In terms of the curriculum that you’re given for music, how much of that is obligatory?
“Well, the document itself you have overall and specific expectations so the overall have to be evaluated. At the end of the course you have to make sure that you’ve gone through all of those overall expectations and the mode that you do it, through strings, or woodwinds, brass, whatever, you’ve covered those expectations. Its still flexible in terms of you might do it through playing an observation, you might do it through written quizzes, the specific expectations you need to try and cover and then there’s these little teaching prompts that are just helpful guides. I forget truthfully if it’s a legal document in terms of the education act, but I mean a principal can (very rarely I don’t think it happens much in music) come and ask you how you are covering these expectations when evaluated so there is the expectation that you do that work. You can assess them and manage them in lots of different ways; you can cluster them together, you can spread them out, there’s lots of flexibility within that but you cant not do them, you cant ignore it. Its not just ‘well try this and see how it works’ it’s ‘this is what you must be doing’”
“the things you must be doing, is that the elements of music and such…?
“well its everything, right, so its basically the overall expectations are more general. It could be play and sing with good tone and good posture, understanding healthy performance habits, learning the elements of music, learning music theory appropriate to the grade, the overall is of course very broad, the specific give you more detail by grade, so it’s sequential. The million-dollar question is ‘does that mean every teacher of every subject does every part of the curriculum?’ I think if you ask any student here they’re going to say no. what we should be doing is looking at the curriculum not as a restriction but a way to creatively teach. You can see any written document as restrictive or you can see it as a way to inform your practise”
“so youre able to control how you deliver the lessons you give?”
“of course you can yeah and I would say in music since we don’t have standardized testing like they do in English and Math and we don’t have that pressure of ‘every student we teach, if lets say it’s a 4U physics class, needs to cover this topic then this topic. We cover the topics but we can cover them in ways that suit A: our students and are clientele and B: our own teaching style. Some teachers can get up in front of the class and do a lecture style on the romantic era and its great and some teachers need to make that more of a cooperative project, some teachers need to get audio visual stuff going on most teachers like me have settled down on a mixture of all of those things what would be called ‘old fashioned chalk and talk’ versus ‘lets get some technology, lets watch some video’ we cant take the class to Vienna so lets bring Vienna to the class. To me, you’ve got two choices; we have a curriculum, its not going to go away because you don’t like it, so you can either push against it and get grumpy or you can be creative and use it as an opportunity.”
“okay, wonderful! If there’s anything you could change or replace in the curriculum, would you change anything?”
“There was a change back in ‘99/’2000 that free’d things up and that’s okay, two things; one is not in the curriculum but its in growing success and that’s the assessment document, I do believe that attendance in a small way should be a part of a student’s mark. It is here at western in many courses and I think that we’re missing an opportunity to teach students that showing up counts and being present physically and mentally counts. And we have situations in any school where students can miss 25-30 classes a semester and still pass and to me there’s something philosophically wrong about that because yeah they’ve done the assessments and handed the tests in but they’ve missed part of the experience and so we’re only a step away from ‘why doesn’t that student do it online? Why isn’t everything online?’ I think being there and being present is a vital part of 99.9% of classes, it should be. And obviously that excepts for illness and serious things in the family, of course, I think we have to be very understanding of that more so perhaps now than ever, but showing up is important. Another thing I would change which isn’t in the document itself is we need a little bit more curriculum support. It would be nice to have maybe some more Canadian content in our method books so we’re not playing American folk songs and we can bring that in ourselves and I’ve done that now but it would be nice to have a little more history. Like, maybe after 16 years someone could write a Canadian book that covers our music history and indigenous music and pull together all those resources that maybe we do individually but don’t always have the time to share. We have very little in curriculum support and again, some teachers would say ‘but that restricts me’ no, I can pick my music and I can pick how to teach it but it would be nice to have a bit of resource to draw on for the students. So that’s my personal philosophy on that, I’m not sure if everybody would agree with that.
“In terms of teaching music to an inexperienced student, what would be the most important thing you would want them to understand about music?”
“That its doing thing, that everybody to a greater or lesser extent can do and I think its getting them making music as soon as possible and that’s difficult with a kid on the tuba in grade seven, to get them to that point where they feel they are doing something musical and I know I still struggle with that because the technique gets in the way. Things like learning to play, in quotes ‘the right notes’. You cant have 26 people sitting together in a classroom playing random notes, you have to come to some consensus whether that’s unison, chords or whatever. Its getting past the technique to the music that’s the biggest challenge. Some students come to you naturally predisposed to do that even if its in a different medium, like they play the piano well, you’re teaching them trumpet, it clicks sooner. Some students don’t have any background but you can see they’re naturally musical, some students, its not necessarily their thing and I’ve taught a good number of students over the years that stick with music for four years, their terrific people, their terrific fun and its not their thing, they know its not their thing. I never tell them, but they stick with it because they show up, and they like the friendships and they like the trips and they like music, they like being the third clarinet in the middle of all that sound its kind of cool. Back to the original question I think its getting them to the music as soon as possible because there’s so many things to get past, even with voice, it’s very natural until its not. If you don’t have a good singing voice, you have to get them to that point where they can sing on pitch with a healthy tone and they aren’t trying to sound like their favourite pop singer who can sing three octaves higher. We still have to deal with technique and organization of that. We have to get them to the music sooner.
“Have you seen any changes in a student’s overall attitude or behaviour after being introduced to music? Perhaps in the beginning they weren’t listening, fidgety, a little stand offish but then towards the end changed with the introduction of music?”
“Absolutely. I think music can help with that, I think the arts can help with that, I just think that doing something that’s bigger than you can help with that. The problem is with any system whether it’s a school, university or big organization is we’re pushed into a hole you know? The square peg, round hole and so we know most of our students are all so individual, they don’t all fit the same mold. 30% or so of our students are introverted versus extroverted. I think for the extroverts for example sometimes music helps them become a little more towards the introvert side, at least understanding that side and maybe for introverts it gives them that opportunity to get on to the extrovert spectrum because as we all know you cant just be one, you have to have a little bit of the other tendencies. So have I ever had a student that’s completely out of control and music helped tame the savage beast you know what I mean? I would say more in elementary. My first few years I taught grade 7 and 8 music and there were some kids that for sure with music its not that it calmed them down and took away who they were but it gave them a focus. Can you do that through a basketball program or something? Yeah if that’s their thing, it depends on what their thing is but I would say music can be very beneficial for students who come to high school and don’t have a thing yet, don’t have a group of friends and they can then find some commonality with those kids. I like it that most of the music kids at my school aren’t just music kids, they’re also on the badminton team or just came back from the provincial competition for swimming and were the key swimmers, that’s awesome. When we do feeder schools we ask the students to wear their team jerseys not their music jerseys so [they] (audience of the feeder school tours) can see that wow there’s wrestlers and rugby players and I think its great that music’s part of that experience its a collage, its not just an individual snapshot.
“What has been your favourite moment as a music educator?”
“I saw this one coming and you know what though a buddy of mine who’s a music teacher too and has now moved to a different faucet of education we talk about this years ago and I’m not just saying this because I’m being recorded but I firmly believe in the whole legacy thing. The Mr. Hollands Opus thing, that’s great and it’s a great movie and it’ll be great when I retire to look back on the years and look at the room and the things we’ve done but I really believe that our real joy as music educators is the here and now. Its great to be talking to you as an ex student, to have Julia playing in the band, Robert, but its more about today; is there something I did today that clicked, or even with the symphonic band, was there something we did today that made someone better or made someone smile or made a connection to someone and those are the things. I just feel its not about legacy, because really, you’re four years away from being forgotten. You walk into the school four years after you retire and every kid in the school is going to be like ‘I don’t know who this old guy is’ so its about the here and now. Sometimes we get that right and we have those moments at the end of the day, where I know, at banting for example where there’s kids in the hallway eating lunch that I don’t know and they don’t know who I am other than I teach at the school and I just try to say ‘hi how’s your day?’ or I listen to a song on their iPod, its those momentary connections. I guess now it does make me think of one. Several years ago I got a card from a student whose graduating, who I only taught in grade nine and she said ‘Mr. Evans I just want to tell you I had such a great experience in grade nine, I really enjoyed music. I wish I could have continued, I couldn’t’ and said ‘I just want you to know you were so kind’ it was just something nice but she remembered for years later to right me a card. Wow. So its that. And that to me is more reflective of what I tried to do with her four years ago and that’s the important thing.
“If you could change anything about the way music is taught today, what would you change?”
“I think the big picture thing that is happening in education, not just in music is we need more specialists teaching specialist subjects. I’m a parent, two of my kids are in high school, I do not want their physics class to be taught by a biology teacher and I definitely don’t want it to be taught by a mathematician who took a little bit of science in university. I really feel that that is a slippery slope. I’ve taught English and I’ve taught history with a reasonable degree of success, I shouldn’t be teaching math. Someone says they have a general BEd, so I can teach that subject, no. It’s wrong. I can play soccer, I shouldn’t be coaching it. There’s a skill, and there’s an honour and there’s a quality in what we do as music educators and as math educators and we need to retain that. I think it’s a shame and I think in the elementary schools it’s getting worse than the high schools where we have people who took piano lessons for a few years and got their grade 6 or 7 and haven’t gone through a program like you’re doing and are teaching music. That is a change I would like to make. And that’s our unions, that’s our teachers union that has made that decision to make people more general and less specialist and I think that’s a real determent to the profession.
“would you almost challenge the second teachable with that?”
“If the second teachable is done well I think it can be a good thing. If someone is really serious about lets say music, and history as a second teachable and they take the right kind of history courses. The one I always think about is English, when people have English as a second teachable and they took a really oddball course like “Game of Thrones Literature”. You need to learn about Shakespeare and you need to learn how to teach kids how to write. If you’re going to be a teacher and you’re going to make English your second teachable, take the courses that are going to prepare you to be an English teacher and not just learn more about English. My second teachable is vocal, I have a year of a masters in vocal ed and pedagogy so I mean I felt pretty well qualified to teach vocal, obviously not as much a singer would be but I had a thorough background in vocal music and not just a weekend course kind of thing. So the second teachable is a difficult thing and I think more and more people need it to be employable, but I do feel if people do take courses towards a second teachable they should take courses that are actually relevant to them in the high school setting.
“is there an idea or ideology that you feel should be focused on in general?”
A couple of things based on previous experience and past experience. One is I think more connection between the elementary and secondary panels so we have a sense of curriculum between us, so its not just you finish grade 8 and lets hope for the best. There needs to be more flow between elementary and secondary education again the union issue gets in the way there but its nice to think we could collaborate more. I also feel that students need to play by ear more. More sound before symbol, or more ‘lets find that note, lets play frère Jacque and create something’ I think tied into that, playing by ear and playing by ear with structure, not just random notes encourages students to try things by ear and it gets them thinking ‘well now I can go home and try this by ear’ and opens the door and tied into that is composition. And composition not in the strict sense that we have to come up with a symphony and it has to be neatly written out but composing things that has for the level the students are at some sort of aesthetic value. A beginning, middle and end, whether its four bars, or 48 bars or whatever. Something the grade 12’s at banting did, its not necessarily composition but they do a cover song assignment where they have to cover someone else’s music using traditional acoustic music. They can use a bit of guitar or pia and their band instruments but the other day there was an all female group and some if them sang, none of them would consider themselves a singer but the class agreed that their actual arrangement improved on the original. It was a better version of the song and the words meant more because of the way they arranged it. That’s pretty cool. That’s something we should be doing more to become facilitators not just teachers as much.
“is there anything you feel you are able to bring to the students that other educators aren’t able to do?”
“I think there can be more of a connection potentially because you’re teaching students for four years rather than in and out. Way back when I started teaching, one of my associate teachers basically said ‘it comes down to this, do you love kids? Do you love music? Then you’re fine’ and it’s very simplistic but its kind of like, yeah. If you don’t love the students the kids will know and if you don’t love teaching the kids will know and you’ll have nothing to teach. Those two things have to come out. Are you going to love every kid every day? Maybe not. Are you always going to check the end result of what you do musically? No because you’re going to want to get better and you’re going to want your kids t get better but if you’re going to have an overriding love of what you’re doing and the people you’re trying to teach that’s a simple way to think about it."